Mr. J. L. Hodgson (Eggington, Beds.). (See also article in this issue, “Some Observations on Production and Productivity.")
You are evidently unaware that the alleged scientific researches of the Technocrats were discredited as soon as they were subjected to responsible examination. The illustration given by you on page 54 of your book (footnote) leaves out of account the power station, workshop, etc. Were these produced without human labour? Regarding your attitude to Capitalism and Socialism, nowhere in your book can we find any statement that you are aware of the necessity of dispossessing the capitalist class of their property in the means of production and distribution and making these the common property of society as a whole. That you are not in favour of this is shown by your proposals for the continuance of the banking system, a price system, and purchasing power (pages 48 and 49). A society in which goods are produced for use will obviously have no use for any of these. You yourself (page 48) describe the distribution of purchasing power and the pegging of prices as “two main things" which “seem to be necessary." Whether as an immediate or as a distant objective they are both worthless and have nothing to do with the abolition of Capitalism and its replacement by Socialism. You entirely miss the point of the remark that the question of what is wasteful is inseparable from the system of society. The production of gold by capitalist countries like South Africa and Russia is not waste, for Capitalism requires gold or some other basis for its monetary system. Under Socialism, on the other hand, when there will be no monetary system, the production of gold for this purpose will be unnecessary. You similarly misunderstand the reference to reparations. We do not accept the narrow nationalistic view that the only question to be considered is the welfare of all or some of the people living in England only. It is therefore true that “the world is not made poorer or richer by the ability of the capitalists in one country to get goods for nothing from the capitalists in another." It is also very much to the point that the goods belong to private individuals. We dispute the validity of your use of the word "community" to describe a social group in which one class owns and another class is dispossessed. You still do not explain how you are going to distribute purchasing power as a gift without taking it away from those who have it.
The reference to the period before 1844 has nothing whatever to do with whether or not you want to re-create the private banks. We simply asked what you meant by the statement that, prior to 1844, there existed a condition—“ credit power . . . widely diffused throughout the community"—which you want to re-create now. If you mean that poverty did not exist before 1844 we deny it.
You ask if we want “detailed proof that bricks can be made with a less total expenditure of man-hours when the brickmaker is aided by power-driven machinery." As you are very well aware, this has never been denied. What we do want (and this you persistently decline to give) is proof of your fantastic statement that “We have devised machines which speed up the output per man of such things and processes as shoes, flour, pig-iron, bricks, ploughing and reaping, from 50 to 3,000 times." If you can produce evidence, why not do so?
The Socialist view concerning “specialists" and “experts" is that they will play their part like other individuals. Russia’s difficulties connected with her development as an industrial capitalist power have little or no bearing on the problem of development from Capitalism to Socialism.
The cause of poverty is at base, the private ownership of the means of life, land, factories, railways, etc. We cannot find any indication in your book that you have grasped this. Since prices and banks (whether planned or otherwise, controlled or uncontrolled, pegged or loose) are of use only to Capitalism, they are rightly described as useless measures for the abolition of poverty.
Ed. Comm.
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